Welcome To Wherever You Are (1992)
Welcome to Wherever You Are finds INXS swerving hard in a new direction—abandoning the polish of X and the shimmering pop-funk perfection of Kick for something darker, weirder, and harder to pin down. It’s a record full of sitars, didgeridoos, orchestral bursts, and swirling psychedelia. It’s also… kind of a mess.
You can feel the grunge explosion of the early ’90s pulling at the edges, as the band stretches into everything from world music to art rock. Questions opens with a sitar and plays more like a prologue than a proper track. Communication drops a didgeridoo into the mix. Taste It features a hurdy-gurdy. The production leans atmospheric and moody—less punch, more murk.
To their credit, INXS didn’t just phone it in. This isn’t Kick 3.0, and it’s not a repeat of X either. They clearly wanted to evolve. But the experimentation often feels more self-conscious than inspired. On My Way and Baby Don’t Cry both suffer from repetitive hooks and bloated arrangements. And even the more ambitious cuts rarely stick the landing.
That said, Welcome to Wherever You Are isn’t unlistenable. It’s still more digestible than their early albums. But aside from a few flickers, there’s just nothing here I feel pulled back to. The X-factor is missing. The band sounds like they’re searching for some new direction—but not in the Same Direction (haha, anyone…?).
This record earns points for effort, but not for staying power. It’s bold, it’s strange, and I respect the risk—but for me, it’s one I won’t revisit often, honestly if at all.
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HighSongs:
Strange Desire
Beautiful Girl
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Own it, Stream it, Forget about it?
I would pass on owning this record. If you’re doing a deep dive into INXS like I am, then the record is worth streaming for understanding the context of the band. That being said, if you are a more casual music listener, I would skip this record. That is unless you are into grunge-lite rock music with bland hooks.
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Overall Rating:
2.5 Stars
